Rule 5: Fight on your own terms

Not all messaging is created equal. It is highly contextual, dependent on audience, environment, medium, and messenger. For those trying to change the world – advocating for a cause greater than themselves and mobilizing others to move big ideas – these mission-driven organizers must follow a different set of rules. Each week, we will unveil our Nine Rules for Movement Messaging. We welcome you to share this with your colleagues and friends. By delivering one rule per week, it is our hope that as advocates and communicators, you can apply them to your own work one by one.

Imagine walking into a party where everyone there is arguing over politics. You stop the conversation, announce your qualifications as a professional on the subject matter at hand, and correct every inaccurate statement you hear. How do you think the partygoers would react? The effect is similar when you base your communications strategy around refuting the arguments and positions promoted by your opposition. Not only are you not winning any friends, you are widening the chasm between.

Such a strategy most commonly manifests itself into a “Myth/Fact” list, where advocates will enumerate each one of the erroneous claims of their detractors for the purposes of taking down each one, bit by bit. Research shows us now that debunking myths not only doesn’t work, it can actually dig a deeper hole for the fact-checker. While we think we are pouring water on our opponent’s flame, we may actually be fueling it.

Our goal as communicators is not to convince our opposition that they are wrong. Most communicators know this. Instead, however, we often mistakenly try to convince everyone else that our opposition is wrong. The truth is, when you concede the frame of the argument, you have already lost. When your opposition gets to define the terms of the debate, it is no longer a fair debate.

In 2018, a few weeks after the mass shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School, I wrote about the recent history of the gun debate and how the gun industry masterfully orchestrates the public dialogue after each mass shooting to center around anything other than guns. And typically, the public fell for it. Our collective call for some action on curbing guns suddenly shifted to discussions about racism or the confederate flag or mental health or the TSA “No Fly” list. It is an effective strategy for the industry because they know that even if they lose the argument, if they can define its terms, they have already won.

When we play on our opposition’s playing field, we lose. Our goal as communicators is to introduce a more compelling alternative frame, not refute the one you are up against.

See how Map Academy frames their alternative learning model affirmatively, rather than immediately refuting everything that is wrong with the traditional system.